Boys and girls, it is very wrong to talk smack. Smack kills. Smack makes you miss the bus. Well, that, and reading Rob’s archives until the very last minute at work. I turned off my computer, locked the office, ran downstairs, ran around the corner, and even yelled “Wait! Wait!” but that mean old 78 bus, it pulled away. I think I heard someone whistling loudly into the bus driver’s microphone. So, this just goes to show you, don’t give Annoying Bus Driver a steely glare when you exit the bus, and don’t write smack in your online journal that no one reads anyway about Annoying Bus Driver. Uh, I mean, about Very Tuneful Whistling And Pithy Comment Making Bus Driver. Don’t do it.
I’m happy to report, in non-smack-talking news, that it’s beginning to be a little light in the morning and a little light in the evenings now here in Seattle. This morning Carl took me to breakfast before driving me to work (awwww) and I was surprised to notice, as I was yelling at Ziggy to get out of my house or he’d have to stay there all day, that there was some actual sunlight up there in the sky. Actually, there was not only some actual sunlight, but some actual beautiful pink and golden clouds hovering over beautiful Mt. Rainier. I have say that the combination of Sunrise Over The Mountain with Bagel From Grateful Bread is an ideal one on a Tuesday morning on your way in to work.
I also got to walk home today since it wasn’t dark out and wasn’t freezing cold, and that was kind of nice too. Man, that almost third of a mile flew by like it was nothing! In September I wasn’t working full time yet and so I would get off the bus at three and walk home along a very busy street. The redeeming quality here was that I got to pass several very big spider webs and it was always interesting to see what they were doing. When I was unemployed over the summer, there was also a web right by my front step, and I say there a lot and watched it do it’s thing. Please don’t laugh when I tell you that I interrupted Carl at work to tell him that I’d seen her wrap something up finally. He was pretty happy for me, I think. Anyway, I like spiders. I don’t neccesarily like them in my bed, though. Which makes me think I should share something with you that I wrote about a year and a half ago and sent out as an email.
The other night when we finally got back [from Burning Man 2000] I was so excited tosleep in my own beautiful bed underneath my canopy onmy sky-blue sheets. I was sitting on my bed readingwhen I see a little shadow by my leg. Then the shadowgrows eight legs and runs over the aformentioned leg. Yes, a big old spider. Big. Old. Spider. Just ahouse spider, you know, not like a brown recluse or
anything, but big. B-I-G. So I hopped agilely up and was going to encourage it to leave me domicile when I noticed, as I was chasing it with a glass and a piece of paper, that it is not the only spider in the vicinity. No, there are actually several more spiders, of all sizes and assortments, clustering around my bed. Oh no. So I go upstairs to see if we have any insect repellent. We don’t. I come back
downstairs with the broom and the dustbuster and pull back the bed from the wall and that is when I behold, in all its arachnid glory, the gigantic…wait forit…NEST OF SPIDERS BEHIND MY BED. After I revive from fainting, I immediately call Carl. Our conversation goes something like this:
Ring ring.
CARL: Carl here.
ME: Carl! There are all these spiders! All over my
room! Behind my bed!
CARL: Hmm?
ME: Spiders! All over the place! One ran over my
leg! Or, well, you know, really near my leg! Behind
my bed! A nest of spiders!
CARL: Now, when you say “nest of spiders,” what do
you mean by that?
ME: I mean there are tons of spiders all over the
place and a lot of webs and there are big ones and
baby ones and in-between ones and there are a lot and
they’re all near my bed!
CARL: Okay. What do you want me to do about it?
ME: Uh…I just wanted to tell you in case you come
over tomorrow and find me wrapped up in silk in a big
bundle.
CARL: Did you ever see that movie Arachnophobia?
ME: (hanging up).
This was very similar to the conversation we had when I found a dead rat floating in my toilet.
Anyway, I vacuumed up most of the webs and the smaller
spiders, and then finally caught the really big one with a glass and a piece of paper and threw it outside…I don’t know if I threw it far enough though. After lugging the mattress and the box spring back into position I shook down all the sheets and blankets and pillows and dropped into a restless,furtive slumber.
Awaking the next morning, I happily noticed I had survived the night and hopped blithely up to go get in the shower. I was shampooing when I noticed…wait for it…a medium sized, eight-legged creature clambering to the top of the conditioner bottle. It waved several legs at me as if it wanted to ask if it could borrow some, as its split ends were really justimpossible. By this time, I was sort of cavalier and
uncaring about the whole thing. “Go ahead,” I said. “You can’t have the deep cleansing stuff though.”
So, what started out as an entry about not talking smack about your bus driver has turned into an entry about putting the aforementioned smack on spiders, unless they are good spiders who don’t want to sleep in your bed with you (because really, you hardly know them and you’re not into that kind of thing anyway) but instead only want to entertain you when you are unemployed. Tune in next time when I tell you about the time two big slugs were having sex on my front step. No, really.